


Of Luminous Being

by avanti_90



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Drabble Sequence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 02:19:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3919159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avanti_90/pseuds/avanti_90
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four times the Force speaks to Leia Organa, and one time she answers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Luminous Being

She is born into a broken world. She knows this without understanding, long before she knows to walk or talk; she _knows_ , in the same way that she knows how to seek out life around her, to reach for that which is joined to her by unseen bonds, for comfort, for welcome, for joy.

She is met instead by the last, frayed threads of fading light, and immeasurable loss, and broken, sharp-edged grief. _Leia_ , she hears; the regret and longing in that voice press down like an unbearable weight upon her small and still-weak heart, and she begins to cry.

 

*

 

On the morning of Aldera's spring festival, Leia runs out into the garden, filled with the scent of the first ladalum-blooms, and something _sings;_ gentle, welcoming, a song she cannot quite grasp.

She doesn't notice when the flowers bend toward her, or when the birds descend at her feet, because she is straining so hard to hear. But Bail Organa comes running out and drags her back into the palace, clutching her so tightly she can hardly breathe.

“I'm home,” she whispers, and he starts weeping.

She can't understand why, but she knows she must never, _ever_ do it again.

 

*

 

She feels the destruction of Alderaan seconds before its light reaches Vader's screen. The heat of the Death Star's laser pierces her breast, the shards of the planet's crust tear into her body, and Leia _knows,_ as if they are hers _,_ every scream unheard, every heartbeat ended, every life that might have been, every life that was hers to protect.

She knows, without understanding, that the gaping emptiness where her planet should be is cut into her, deeper than flesh and blood, and the Dark emerges to whisper from that void.

Nothing Vader does to her afterward hurts at all.

 

*

 

“The Force is strong in my family,” Luke whispers. “I have it. My father has it. My _sister_ has it.”

Leia stares at him, filled with sudden, inexplicable certainty; and in that instant the Leia she knows, the woman built of hatred for the Empire, of fear and grief – is gone, obliterated. Her place is filled by the rushing water and the wind, by the starlight and vines tangling over the cave, and nothing, _nothing_ compares with the rush of joy and fullness, welcome and hope, when the Force sings in her heart, and the word it sings is _Jedi_.

 

*

 

She opens the dust-covered doors of the Senate, and in the dome's reflected light she glimpses a woman clad in robes of shining white; she burns with unearthly purpose, brighter than the saber in her hands.

But Leia is a person, too, she thinks, with purpose of her own; so she puts upon herself the robes of the Chancellor, and lifts the seal of the renewed Republic, her own light and hope. But she reaches out to touch the vision, gently, like a fluttering insect that will soon leave her grasp.

 _Jedi,_ it sings to her.

 _Leia_ , she whispers back.

 


End file.
